Internet censorship
You don’t see it clearly. You don’t quite hear it. Heck, you might not even sense it during a careful vigil through the day. But it’s creeping up on you, slowly, but ever so surely. It’s beginning to extend its talons towards your vulnerable, fleshy neck, in anticipation of complete subjugation. And if you don’t pay attention and act now, it will begin to control you.
In a seemingly innocuous tweet I read throughout the microcosm of Indian ISP directed messages through the Twitterverse, it became clearer to me just how aware people were of this demon. “IPL incidents get front page headline coverage. Threat to our internet freedom gets some obscure positioning on a double digit page.” I couldn’t help but agree. While it’s a direct message to us, I understand both parts of the problem, and I can’t help but conclude that the internet is right, once again.
In the past week, many Indian ISPs, on apparent “court orders”, restricted or prohibited access to various services and websites on the internet. These popular sites and services, which include many peer-to-peer sharing portals like torrentz.eu and The Pirate Bay, video sharing websites such as Vimeo and DailyMotion, and even services such as the PlayStation Network for certain users. This has resulted in a gigantic uproar, causing a rippling effect throughout the Indian public.
People have begun to ask various questions, raise several doubts, and participate in some fiercely contested debates, many directly questioning the ISPs for said “court orders” and questioning why the government would want to put the public on a leash like the systems in China and decide what they should want and get for themselves. While most torrent portals are used for illegal file sharing and the promotion of piracy, one mustn’t forget that they are also used for equally legitimate peer-to-peer file sharing, the copyrights of which belong to the respective companies, and ideally, should not be of any interest to the government. Many people also ask for better paid, legal alternatives for their TV show and movie needs like Netflix and Hulu, both of which aren’t in India.
A totally different line of argument arises from one of the fundamental rights of an individual on the Internet: the freedom of choice. A user must be free to decide and choose what is and what isn’t right for him/her online, and a restrictive censorship of the most open and equal network on the planet by a bunch of monetarily-starved companies mustn’t detract any organisation from that singular ideal.
With faceless, but feared and powerful unions like Anonymous’s India division now joining the fray by taking down several ISP and government portals, the battle for our internet freedom has begun. What do you think? Where are you poised? Let us know on facebook.com/Tech Chronicle.
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